Current Back to Nature Organics News

Newsletter 2015

Hello again to all our Back-to-Nature Customers

As spring has begun with some beautiful warm weather, we are getting excited for another busy growing year! Last year was a success in our books. We would just like to take a few minutes and let you in on how things went, what we learned and what our plans are for the year ahead.

About Us

Back-to-Nature Organics has had a successful second year in business. We started in 2013 raising 100 Organic pastured Broilers (meat chickens) and have been growing ever since. Last year (2014) we raised 300 pastured broilers and 4 pigs that we got from a neighboring pig farm. We are excited to look at some new opportunities this year as well as expand the current products that we are raising. As we look to expanding, we always make sure that we keep our mission as our top priority. Back-to-Natures mission is to “grow nutrient dense, chemical and anti-biotic free, humanly raised food.” We want to raise our animals outside in the fresh air and in a natural environment so they can live their lives the way God intended them to live. We believe raising animals this way produces the most nutritious and best tasting food, as well as provides a very satisfying and enjoyable way of life for us. We always want to keep this as a priority in all our expansion so that we don’t lose the quality of our product by trying to produce quantity.

Last year in August I was married to my beautiful wife Carrie. We enjoyed a beautiful wedding at Carrie’s home parish in Lucan surrounded by family and friends. The next 10 day we took a road trip out east to tour the Maritime Provinces. We stopped along the way to visit some Organic Dairy farms and a potato farm. After a wonderful vacation, we returned home and got throw back into real life immediately. With Carrie returning to work as a nurse, trying to make the old farm house we are living in feel like home, the crops coming off late and trying to get the field work done between the rains; there was no shortage of jobs to get done. Trying to coordinate a nurse and a farmer’s schedule is not overly easy, but we made it work. In January, we got the exciting news that we are expecting a baby. The newest member of our family will be arriving in September; we are both super excited for this new adventure. Carrie will also be giving me a hand with the business this year and helping to expand it into areas that fit her own expertise. We are looking forward to what the future holds, we would love to have you join us for the ride!!

Back-to-Nature Website

This year, we have been working on getting our business website up and running. It has taken us a bit longer than we thought it would to get it put together, but with the assistance of a friend we finally got it finished. Feel free to visit our site for all the info on our products and also to order online. We have an electronic order form that you can fill out that gets sent to our e-mail. Its super handy and cuts down on a lot of postage and printing cost. Websites are a new endeavor for us so please be patient if it takes us a few days to get back to you. We will reply to your order to let you know that we got it.

How It Works

We would just like to give you a run down on how our farm business is set up.

Ordering

All the ordering is set up online. We have an online order form that you can fill out. When you submit your form it is e-mailed to us, we will personally e-mail you back to let you know that we got your order. If you are more comfortable calling or e-mailing us, we can do that too.

We would like to have customers place their orders in the spring if possible. This helps us figure out how much of each item to grow and so that we do not grow way to much or way to little then what our customers are looking for. Plus, it also helps you as our customers because we fill each order on a first come, first serve basis. The sooner you place your order the more likely that you will end up with the items that you would like. Remember that many of our products we can only raise in the summer so you can order a year supply. The poultry are all frozen in vacuum packed bags and so they keep really well in a freezer and then you can enjoy them all year long. We do raise more of each item then what we have spring orders for. So if you are just hearing about us later in the year you can still give us a ring, we will more than likely still have products available, the selection just might not be quite as good.

Pick – Up/ Delivery

Once you order we will let you know approximately when your orders will be ready. Our first chickens will be ready at the start of July and maybe some produce from the Garden too. We will let you know when the chickens are ready for pick-up. Being that we are so small in numbers, we still prefer that people come out to our farm and pick up their orders. This gives us an opportunity to meet you personally and get to know you. It is also the cheapest way for you to get your food. All our prices are based on farm gate pick-up.

So come down for a bit and have a look around, see what we are up to. We would love to show you around the farm and take you for a ride around our pastures to see the cattle and other animals. If you have kids, bring them along, they will love it. But please let us know when you are coming, there are days that we are harvesting crops and we are busy all day, we don’t want to be in a rush when you come, we want to take some time to get to know you.

If it is not possible for you to come out to the farm every time you make an order, we have a couple of different delivery options for you:

1.First is our Urban Buying Clubs. If we have enough customers in a particular town or city we can schedule a collective drop point in that area where all our customers can come and pick up their orders. The plan is to schedule a drop day every 4 months if we have enough business. There is a couple draw backs to this. First, in order for us to make the group work we need over $2000 in orders to make our trip worth it. So we would need to have a bunch of customers on board to make it work. Second, there will be a 6% delivery charge added to the original price to pay for our time and gas to bring the products to you. This adds some to the cost. But we need to be paid for our time like everyone else. If you are interested in being part of one of these groups please give us a call and we will see what we can figure out. Also talk to your friends, the more customers that we have from your area the easier it is to make it work.

2.The other option we have is Home delivery. We have connected with a delivery company from London, Ontario called Eat Green Organics. They are a Farmer to consumer Delivery Company that will drop off your order at your door step. Basically, you would go on their website and browse their selection of our organic products, as well as other organic products from farms all over South Western Ontario and order the items that you would like. Once you place your order, they will drive out to the farm and pick up what their customers have ordered and drop it off at your door the next day. They make deliveries once a week and they deliver to anywhere from Sarnia to Kitchener. We are super excited to be able to work with them, it has allowed us to expand and reach more customers. For all their information see their website @ www.eatgreenorganics.com. The draw back to this option is again it cost more for the food. They have to mark up our products a bit it pay for their time and travel as well. But if you are really busy, these 2 options might be a fit for you.

Payment

You can pay for your orders when you pick them up. We take cash or cheque. No credit cards please.

Products:

Organic Pastured Chicken

This year we will be expanding our chicken flock from 300 broilers to 600 broilers. This expansion meant that we had to build more pasture shelters. Which has been the focus of much of our after hour work over the last few months. We have just moved all 600 chickens out to pasture into their new homes.

The processing: For processing the poultry this year, we have had to switch processing plants since the one we used last year does not do custom butchering anymore. We are now driving to Highgate, Ontario for our chickens to be processed. The extra distance and increase in processing cost has added to the increase in our chicken prices this year.

The pricing: This year, we will be increasing the price from 4.50/lb to $4.99/lb for whole chickens. In addition, we have adjusted the prices on our cut up chickens. This is partly due to increase in processing cost, but also to increasing feed cost over the past 2 years. We will always try to be transparent with you and we will not raise the price without letting you know the reasons why we have to raise it.

New Products:

Organic Ducks

This year, we will be raising some ducks to add to our poultry selection. Growing up, Frank’s family had ducks that his father raised to sell. Frank wanted to continue on with that. We are trying it out, Carrie has never tried duck, but at least Frank knows how to raise them. We will just have to learn how to best cook them. So if you’re looking for a bit of an adventure give one of our ducks a try. We have not got the price on those yet, because we don’t know how long it takes to raise them or how much they eat. We will have the prices on the website as soon at the ducks get processed. The ducks will be raised on pasture, mixed with our turkeys in a large pen. We are planning on moving the ducks a couple of times each week, to give them a fresh supply of pasture.

Organic Turkey

You can start preparing for the Thanksgiving Dinner now! We have found that there is a very limited supply of organic turkey out there and thought we could solve this problem for you. If you eat organic food all year round, why would you want to eat differently for the holidays—Christmas or Thanksgiving? We are raising 50 turkeys this year. They too will be raised on pasture with the ducks. We are planning on offering small (12-20lb) turkeys whole and offering them cut up as well?

Organic Pork

Frank has been working hard for this one! It took a little while just to figure out how to get organic piglets to raise. Most of the farmers in the area use medicated feed as soon as the piglet starts to eat (day 10 of their life). After a lot of research, Frank found that we needed to buy a pregnant momma pig and feed it organic feed for the final month and a half of her pregnancy, and then the piglets would be certified organic. Our momma pig, Sally, had her piglets a few weeks back! Sally is now the proud mother of 13. So we will have lots of pork for sale this fall. Prices for 2015 fall pork is on our website.

Organic Eggs

Along with all the other poultry we will have around here this summer, we also have organic laying hens. They will start laying in July or August, so from then on we will have organic eggs for sale. The laying hens will be raised on pasture for the summer and in the barn for the winter. They will have lots of room to roam around.

Organic Produce

This is what Carrie is most looking forward too. Carrie has always enjoyed gardening and this year, she will have a bigger garden then she used to with a lot more variety. We have planned out our garden according to survey’s we put out last year—hopefully we will have what you are looking for. We are using companion planting to arrange our garden. Companion planting is using the characteristics of vegetables and herbs to complement each other; for example if one plant takes away nitrogen, we plant something beside it that adds nitrogen to the soil; or to keep tomatoes pest away, we are planting basil near it.

We will be offering a variety of organic vegetables including: potatoes, beets, onions, peas, beans, lettuce, peppers, tomatoes, watermelon, carrots, broccoli, sweet corn and popcorn, as well as a variety of herbs. We will have a road side stand that you can drop by whenever you want, or place an order, and we will gladly get it ready for you. There will also be a tab on our Website where you can check out what is ready in the Garden each week.

Organic Beef

We also will be offering Organic Beef for sale. The beef comes from our families’ certified organic dairy farm. As new cows are born and come into the milking herd, there is not enough room for everyone, so the extra cows become our organic beef. The cows are raised on pasture during the grazing season and in the barn in the winter months so that they don’t have to live in the mud. But we are always super excited when we get to let them out again in the spring. Being that the cows were bread for dairy and not for beef we don’t end up with a lot of nice juicy stakes. They make much better roasts, hamburger, and stew meat, but we do have stakes available every now and then. So keep your eyes open. The prices for all of our beef products are on our website.

That will conclude our Newsletter for this year! Thanks for taking the time to get to know us. We hope that we will get a chance to meet you this coming year. Sorry if any of the ordering is not as organized as it could be, this is a whole new world for us, it may take us a bit to get good at it. We wish you all the best and may God bless you.

Sincerely

Frank & Carrie Vander Vloet

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